O.C. entrepreneurs seeking to predict college admissions odds

“It was really easy to do,” Cabrera said. “I told a lot of my friends about it, and they started using it, too.”

RESTRAINT URGED

College admissions officials say such prediction services are understandably attractive, but cautioned families not to read too much into the results.

“It’s an interesting tool, but if they get slightly discouraging news, it shouldn’t discourage a student from applying to a school that they think would be a good fit,” said Michael Reilly, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.

Applicant pools also fluctuate annually, so a student who didn’t make the cutoff one year might have been admitted in a different year, said Michael Drummy, Chapman University’s chief admissions officer and an assistant vice chancellor.

“I don’t see how a company could have all of this information about our needs – more or less out-of-state students, interests, programs, ethnic diversity, all kinds of evolving and changing criteria year to year,” Drummy said.

StatFuse isn’t the first site to predict college admissions odds, but it’s unique among competitor sites like Cappex and Parchment in that it doesn’t rely on crowd-sourcing to make its predictions.

In other words, other sites ask users to report whether they were accepted to a particular college; then that data is aggregated and used make future predictions.

But StatFuse’s formulas are based on data drawn directly from annual reports published by the colleges. The data include everything from the ethnic breakdown of the admitted class to how heavily the college says it weighs factors like family legacy and first-generation status.

WEIGHTING ACCOMPLISHMENTS

To develop their prediction model, Banerjee and Shah consulted with retired college admissions officers and scrutinized college application forms to figure out how to weigh more than a dozen admissions factors.

Then, they used a trial-and-error approach with real student data to refine their formula, which they are seeking to patent.

“When we talked to admissions officers, that’s where we really understood that it’s not as much about the exact name of an organization or club – they care about the number behind it,” Banerjee said. “They want to see a well-rounded student – three or four clubs, academics, sports.”

Neither Banerjee nor Shah is new to the entrepreneurial tech world. In high school, Banerjee started a web application development business, JB Force Media, that he eventually sold to fund the start-up costs of StatFuse. Shah, meanwhile, ran a website-design business in high school with a cousin.

Supan "Shawn" Shah, 19, left, and Jeet Banerjee, 21, have created a website that lets high school students calculate the odds they'll get into a particular college, based on their grades, test scores, resume and other factors. The fledgling startup, called StatFuse and housed in an office in Orange, relies on a proprietary weighted formula and publicly available admissions data from 1,200 colleges to make the predictions. JOSHUA SUDOCK, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Jeet Banerjee, 21, talks about his passion for entrepreneurship at his desk. The company he co-founded, StatFuse, has already garnered about 30,000 users since launching in January. JOSHUA SUDOCK, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Supan "Shawn" Shah, 19, talks about his passion for entrepreneurship at his StatFuse desk. JOSHUA SUDOCK, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Orange County natives Jeet Banerjee, 21, left, and Supan "Shawn" Shah, 19, have created a website that lets high school students calculate the odds they'll get into a particular college, based on their grades, test scores, resume and other factors. JOSHUA SUDOCK, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
StatFuse.com, a college admissions prediction service, is the brainchild of two young Orange County entrepreneurs. STATFUSE.COM

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